Money Leaf

I spent most, well pretty much all, of today re-learning how to ski! My uncle and I went up to Winter Park resort and rented for the day. At last count we did something like 10 or so runs today, and I'm probably going to have to get myself a pair of skies in the next few weeks....skiing is awesome. So much better than boarding, at least in my opinion.

It was only after we'd gotten back, showered and eaten that I remember that I hadn't done a photo yet today.

At first, I tried taking some photos of the fire place. The flames were looking pretty cool, but it wasn't working out very well, so I scrapped that. It was more of a warm up anyway.

Next to the fire is a money plant, I guess it's called. But that's not important. What is important is the beautiful vein structure of the leaves. They're very pronounced and prominent, perfect for taking pictures :)

With leaves, I like to back light them. It really helps bring out the veins, since they are more dense than the leaf around and they show up darker. What's awesome about the money plant is that since the veins are to large, there is actually highlighting going on that really, really brings out the details.

To shoot, I started at f/2, ISO100, and the power of the strobe at 1/128. Annnnnnd the image was pure white. It tried again with three stops down, and it was still white. So then I just stopped all the way down and what do you know, perfect exposure! I did shoot with a 4x macro filter, just to get a bit closer to the leaf. At f/22, only the central light rays were admitted to the lens, so aberration and distortion were put to somewhat of minimum. f/16 might have been better for the lens alone, but with the filter I think this gave better results.

The first thing I did in editing was convert to b/w. Then I used that Lr HDR technique, upping the shadows all the way and lowing the highlights. Then setting the white and black points with the sliders while holding option. This gave the most detail possible in the photo, while still getting a full range of tones.

See you tomorrow!